4-km Resolution Realtime Forecasts for the Atlantic Hurricane SeasonPresented by the Center for Analysis and Prediction of StormsUniversity of Oklahoma

CAPS is producing twice daily (00 and 12 UTC) 48-hour-long realtime 4-km grid-spacing WRF ARW forecasts
for the 2010 hurricane season over much of the Atlantics, initialized from GFS analysis, and from global
EnKF analysis produced by Jeff Whitaker of ESRL. The forecasts are posted at
http://www.caps.ou.edu/wx/p/ and enter through the daily calendar.

This web page contains two panels. Left panel is for calendar, case chooser and product area. Right panel contains animation control panel and animation frame. The web page will resynchronize with the server every 30 minutes automatically for product availability.

User can choose a forecast date by clicking the calendar directly. The forecast available days are higlighted with colors. All dates in gray indicate forecast is not available on that day.

A forecast case identified with initialization time can be chosen from two sets just below the calendar. One set is initialized from NCEP GFS analyses and the other one is from global EnKF analyses produced by Dr. Jeff Whitaker of ESRL.

The forecast products for the chosen case on the highlighted calendar day can be selected in the production area. Text in gray color indicates unavailable product on that day for that specific case.

The status bar just above the animation frame should change accordingly once a selection is made.

The link "More Forecast Fields" will redirect to http://www.caps.ou.edu/wx/p/ for additional forecast products with the selected case on the selected day. The back button of the web browser should bring you back to this page again.

The server provides all images with two resolutions. The lower resolution (1000x1000) is for animation purpose and the higher resolution is 1500x1500.

First, stop the animation using the control buttons above the frame.

Click anywhere in the image, a pop-up window will be opened with higher resolution image centered at where user clicked.

User can adjust the zoom box size with "Box Size" drop-down list.

The zoom box can also be moved around with mouse by dragging the gray area just left the lock button .

User can lock the zoom box with button so that the zoom window can animate synchronously with the main loop once user starts the animation again. Note that lower animation speed is recommended, especially with large zoom box size. The zoom box will also be locked automatically once it is dragged around.

Once the animation is stopped, a set of controllers will appear on the left-top corner of the image.

Click for full screen (actually, full size of the browser client area).

Click , for zooming in and zooming out.

Button for restoring to original size and location.

Users can also control the slide show with keyboard as long as the slider handler is green and it will turn to green when the animation is stopped or users click the slider handler explicitly. The acceptable key strokes are arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down, Home and End etc.